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By Caitlin Yilek, , Kathryn Watson
/ CBS News
Washington — The House is voting soon on a bill to prevent a government shutdown just hours before a midnight deadline, with Republican leaders expressing confidence that the latest version of their legislation can attract a majority.
Speaker Mike Johnson emerged from a meeting with his fellow Republicans on Friday and said he believed lawmakers will manage to pass a bill that extends government funding and provide billions in disaster aid without addressing the debt ceiling.
“We will not have a government shutdown, and we will meet our obligations,” Johnson said.
The House is expected to vote on the latest version of the spending bill between 5 and 5:30 p.m. GOP leaders unveiled the text of the legislation just after 4:30 p.m., and it runs 118 pages.
“Today’s bill extends government funding through March 14, which will grant Congress the needed time to reach a final agreement on our FY 25 spending bills,” Republican Rep. Tom Cole, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said on the House floor ahead of the vote. “It will also give President-elect Trump an opportunity to participate in the process. Governing by continuing resolution, Mr. Speaker, is never ideal. But Congress has a responsibility to keep the government open and operating for the American people. The alternative, a government shutdown, would be devastating to our national defense and for our constituents, and would be a grave mistake. Today’s bill, Mr. Speaker, avoids such a self-inflicted error.”
On Thursday, the GOP majority tried to fast-track a measure that would keep the government funded and raise the debt ceiling, a demand issued at the 11th hour by President-elect Donald Trump that upended negotiations. Dozens of Republicans voted against the measure, and only two Democrats supported it.
Johnson presented his latest plan at Friday’s meeting, according to lawmakers who spoke to reporters. The latest bill is almost identical to the one that failed on Thursday, but it excludes the debt ceiling suspension. That leaves three major parts: a clean short-term extension of government funding, billions of dollars in disaster relief and billions more in aid to farmers.
But the situation remained fluid as the afternoon unfolded and there was no immediate public reaction from Trump, who has pushed hard for a vote to abolish or suspend the debt ceiling before he takes office. Addressing the debt limit would not happen under the plan that Johnson presented to members — instead, Republicans would commit to tackling it in a tax bill next year.
Government funding will technically lapse at midnight Friday night absent a funding extension. But most of the effects of a shutdown wouldn’t begin to be felt until Monday morning, potentially giving lawmakers some breathing room if an impasse stretches past the deadline.
Any bill to keep the government funded will still need approval from the Democratic-controlled Senate and President Biden. Democrats began the day Friday by pushing Republicans to bring up the original deal they supported, but they haven’t ruled out supporting a version of the bill without the debt ceiling.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said shortly before noon that the “lines of communication have been reopened” but he had not yet seen a plan. He reiterated that addressing the debt limit now would be “premature.” Democrats are reluctant to take the debt ceiling off the table now, when it could be used as leverage during Trump’s upcoming presidency.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the president spoke Friday with both Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and placed responsibility squarely on Republicans.
“This is a mess that Speaker Johnson created, that is his mess to fix,” she said. “There was a deal on the table.”
The House descended into chaos Wednesday when a GOP revolt spurred by Trump and Elon Musk sank the original deal that Johnson had spent weeks negotiating with Democrats.
Johnson then brought up the new version the next day. The legislation would have extended government funding for three months, suspended the debt limit until January 2027 and provided $110 billion in disaster aid. It also included health care policy extenders, funding for rebuilding Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge and a renewal of the farm bill for one year.
Those proposals were all in the original deal, but billions of dollars that Democrats had demanded were cut out. Johnson defended the bill Thursday night before the vote, saying some bipartisan measures were still included.
“The only change in this legislation is that we are going to push the debt limit to Jan. 30 of 2027,” Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said. The second version was considerably slimmer, at 116 pages compared to the 1,547 pages of the original continuing resolution. Trump immediately backed it, calling it a “SUCCESS” and “a very good deal.”
But 38 House Republicans and nearly all Democrats rejected it. Jeffries said the proposal was “laughable.” After the failed vote, Schumer said that “now it’s time to go back to the bipartisan agreement.”
Trump continued to insist on the debt ceiling being included in any stopgap government funding measure, posting on Truth Social overnight that there should not be a deal unless Congress eliminates the debt ceiling — or extends it beyond his presidency to 2029.
“Congress must get rid of, or extend out to, perhaps, 2029, the ridiculous Debt Ceiling. Without this, we should never make a deal. Remember, the pressure is on whoever is President,” he wrote.
The debt ceiling, which limits how much the government can borrow to pay its bills, is suspended until the first quarter of next year, and Trump has said that he’d prefer to force Mr. Biden to approve raising the debt ceiling so he doesn’t have to.
Robert Costa, , , and Ed O’Keefe contributed to this report.
Caitlin Yilek is a politics reporter at CBSNews.com, based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked for the Washington Examiner and The Hill, and was a member of the 2022 Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellowship with the National Press Foundation.
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